In a lab environment, we run a Microsoft KMS server. We had built out an initial group of clients to meet the 25 minimum for KMS. Time passed and some engineers built out another group of clients, but everytime a client attempted to activate:
0xC004F038
The Software Protection Service reported that the computer could not be activated. The count reported by your Key Management Service (KMS) is insufficient. Please contact your system administrator.
The server did not show any errors and I could see the entries in the KMS log. I made sure the SRV record was in place, forward/reverse DNS was clean, and the system clocks were in sync. After some head banging, started digging into the Event details using the info below:
EventID: 12290
Logged by: KMS
Message:
An activation request has been processed.%nInfo:%n%1
| HRESULT | Return code | 0x0 |
| N-Policy | Client product minimum count needed to activate | 25 |
| Machine | Client computer name | kms03.site5.contoso.com |
| CMID | Client Machine ID | e5c98033-aab6-4d0b-9af9-1d399597dd56 |
| Client Time | Request timestamp | 2006/1/14 22:36 |
| VM Info | Client OS is running in a virtual machine | 1 |
| Licensing Status | License status:
0 - Unlicensed |
2 |
| Time to Expiration | Time remaining (minutes) | 40123 |
| ActID | Activation ID - identifies the license | cf67834d-db4a-402c-ab1f-2c134f02b700 |
That is when I noticed the "CMID" was the same for the different "Machines" attempting to activate. This was a result of the engineers spinning up copies of their VMs. The fix was simple enough, execute the following command on each KMS client, reboot, and try again:
slmgr -rearm